My first thought was "great, Metro is trying to figure out a way to avoid that from happening again."

Then I took the survey.

Ugh!

Look, Metro's communication with riders was terrible that day, but to me, it seemed like the communication within Metro was the key factor for putting so many lives at risk--unnecessarily!

Adding insult to injury, the Metro Board did not even discuss this dangerous event at their meeting. Believe me, as a victim of their negligence, I listened to every minute waiting for someone to step up and ask 'who was responsible?' for endangering so many paying customers so needlessly.

I've attached the survey questions, which I cut and pasted from the survey:

On Tuesday, October 11, 2011 during evening rush hour, Orange line service was suspended between Rosslyn and Ballston. Emergency responders rescued a man who placed himself in the path of a train. While incidents such as this during rush hour cause unavoidable major delays, we want to learn how we can help you better in the future. Please give us your feedback from the experience.

Did the incident affect your afternoon commute?

Were you on the train that struck the man?

How did you first learn about the incident and the subsequent delay?

When did you find out about this incident?

If you would have known this was happening in advance, would you have changed your commute?

How would you have changed your commute if you had had known about the incident?

Did you know about the bus shuttles that Metro was running during this incident?

What is the best way we can get information to you when incidents like this happen?

How much longer did your commute take than a "normal" commute would have?

How did you get home the day of the incident?

Are you registered for Metro e-alerts?

Do you follow WMATA on Twitter?

Where do you live?

What is your gender?

What is the highest level of education you have completed?

How old are you?

Are you of Latin or Hispanic Origin?

What is your race?

What is your household's annual income range?

My question to Metro: WTF?

From "SaveMetro:"

I was selected for a WMATA survey about the event last Tuesday. Wow, Lucky me.

Anyway, it seemed a little useless. It kept asking me the same questions over and over, just phrased differently. Silly questions. And a waste of time.

But I do hope that they learn something from this experience.

I stayed at work for a while, and left when things were clearing up. It still took me over two hours to get home.

I just wish that the survey allowed me to submit some comments because, I would tell them to make the information uniform.

From the train operators to the PIDs to the Twitter feeds. It was obvious that day they all varied.

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